


A Study in Creepiness

by relenafanel, rlnerdgirl



Series: Welcome to Hale [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Derek has a degree in causing Fear, Fake Murder Camp, M/M, Prequel, Stiles likes hot chocolate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relenafanel/pseuds/relenafanel, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rlnerdgirl/pseuds/rlnerdgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek is not being creepy when he stops by Stiles' cabin to check in on him at four a.m. He’s just making sure the grounds' victim hasn’t wandered away or been eaten by mountain lions, which he’s doing because Stiles doesn’t actually know what’s happening--or, at least, going to happen--and there was a report of a mountain lion sighting back in August. Really, it’s a safety thing. That’s all.</p><p> </p><p>  <em>A Welcome to Hale Prequel</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study in Creepiness

 

 

Derek wouldn’t go so far as to call it love at first sight, mainly because it wasn’t.  
  
The psychology department’s offices are located on the second floor of Manester library on campus. It’s the main, general library and the psychology department doesn’t take up the whole second floor, just a fraction of it. The part rims around the decent sized café space that acts as an enticing entrance to the Land of Information That Can Also Be Accessed Online, which is the nickname the psychology department has for libraries thanks to another PhD student—not Derek—whose thesis revolves around the architectural, interior decorative, and marketing changes involved in the building of new libraries that are meant to lure people away from online databases and back toward physical books.  
  
None of that actually matters. What matters is that Derek’s office is located above and a little off from the café proper, meaning the one-way windows of the wall behind his desk give him an unobstructed view of every caffeine desperate, starved, more-likely-than-not hipster student that stumbles through the long line of glass double doors, drawn in by smells of coffee, sugar, and food.  
  
None of which Derek can actually smell in his office, thank God.  
  
For the most part, Derek doesn’t get distracted by people watching from the God Window (another coined psychology department term) because he’s strategically set his office up so he sits with his back to it, but every once in awhile, when undergraduate papers and bluebooks want to make him drag himself to the roof of the library and jump, or he’s procrastinating writing his thesis under the guise of brainstorming, he’ll swivel around in his chair and watch students scurry around like ants.  
  
Today is Monday, two weeks before winter break, and between impending finals and the fact that it’s pissing rain outside, the library and the café are seeing the most traffic that’s come in since midterms. Derek knows this because he’s in the process of brainstorming through the new version of his Principles of Psychology final, and by this point his brainstorming process has regressed to staring out his window. The difficulty being finding the perfect balance of testing student knowledge, making students feel like they don’t know anything, and not making himself want to stab his eyes out when he goes to grade.  
  
It’s the same conundrum as every quarter, because he has yet to achieve that final, most vital, dream test requirement.  
  
He’s about to turn away from people watching, maybe actually get some work done, or just cave and get a coffee, when a pair of the double glass doors burst inward and a lanky guy, dripping wet, half spills - half skids into the library. The moment he steps off the mud mat he loses his footing and does a phenomenal, graceless, contortion of motions to keep his balance, the likes of which make Derek wince, hand hovering over the phone--a  preemptive move to the call that is, no doubt, going to need to go out to nine-one-one.  
  
It’s impressive, he’ll admit, that the guy not only keeps his balance but finishes what looks like the worst dance moves of the eighties with a grin and flourish that makes it almost look like he did the whole thing on purpose.  
  
Almost.  
  
x.x.x.x.x.  
  
Derek doesn't spend spring term watching for the kid with the obvious band shirts, but if he happens to look out the window around the same time band-shirt regularly comes in for his coffee, it's just a coincidence.  He thinks band-shirt is probably just getting out of a class, or just heading to one, and that just happens to be the time when Derek's eyes get tired of staring at his computer all morning.  
  
It takes him all of spring term before he runs into band-shirt outside of his office setting.  It’s probably a coincidence that it happens during another end of term moment, when he’s reached the point of wondering which office implement would be best for the stabbing of eyes as he grades papers from the in-class exam he gave his Psych 101 students.  Everybody knows that first year students are the worst to mark, and one would assume that once they have gotten through the first eight months of their university careers that they would have picked up some basic writing skills, or at least some studying skills, but that rarely happens to be the case.  So it’s probably a coincidence that Derek’s outside of his office when he first sees band-shirt up close, but it’s no coincidence that he’s reached the end of his rope with grading and is in desperate need of caffeine and maybe a lemon square.  
  
He isn’t entirely paying attention, his eyes actually hurting from the scowl permanently etched across his brow, when he steps into the cafe line in the common area on the ground floor of the library.  He usually avoids places he can run into students, but while the staff room of the Psychology Department has a coffee machine that spits out some kind of drudge that could half-heartedly be considered coffee, it’s the lemon squares that prompts him to risk it.  He’s taken all he can take of sitting in the staff room and watching the coffee machine trickle ooze as it sits across from the God Window overlooking the coffee shop downstairs and contemplating if the set up is some kind of Psychological experiment executed by one of his coworkers.  
  
This is not paranoia.  This is having a frightening realistic understanding of what his coworkers consider fun.  
  
Tenureship, for example.  Tenureship is fun.  
  
Derek’s mouth is practically watering at the idea of those lemon squares as he reaches closer to the front of the line until there is just one person in front of him, a tall guy in a hoodie who’s frantically flipping through a notebook in his hand with the intensity of someone cramming notes at the last moment.  Derek’s mouth automatically curls into sneer of derision because he has absolutely no sympathy for kids who don’t study.  He’s been grading tests since his first TA job during his own undergrad, and he is 100% sure that high school graduates are stupider every year.  
  
“Large mint hot chocolate please,” the guy in front of him mutters, not lifting his head from his last minute studying.  
  
The barista stares at the guy, her eyes lifting to see Derek standing next in line, and she winces visibly.  
  
He recognises the barista as a student in the third year class he teaches on Psychology of Fear and she clearly recognises the kid in line in front of him in a way that overcomes her frightened regard for him (an irony, he fully expects to receive a term paper citing his lecturing style as an example of Fear as a Motivator), because she engages Hoodie in conversation while making his mint hot chocolate, holding up the line and making Derek wait impatiently.    
  
Either that, or her terror of him is so great that she needs to avoid him as long as possible, but if there’s one thing he hopes his students have gotten from his class, it is how fruitless it is not to face fears.  
  
“Hold in there, Ferguson’s a hard ass,” she tells the kid.  
  
“Oh?” he lifts his head from his notes long enough to respond.    
  
Angela.  He remembers her name is Angela and congratulates himself on being a successful professor for remembering someone’s name.  Maybe he will get his coffee will full milk instead of black.  
  
“We’ve all been there,” Angela assures the guy.  “Some of us even switched concentrations so we didn’t have to take Ferguson’s class and your degree is so much harder than straight-up Psych.”  
  
“Fear is the mind-killer,” the guy mutters in on off-handed manner as though it was a habitual phrase for him to say.  
  
Derek immediately pays attention because, while he hadn’t loved the Dune novels, that is one of his favourite quotes of all time.  He actually used it in his class a few times and he wonders if it is one of his students in front of him.  He makes a mental note to check, because if the kid has Ferguson’s class and if he comes to him needing an extension on his final paper, Derek is just this side of sympathetic to give him one.  
  
“You’ve got this,” she hands the guy his drink while saying, “so long as you remember to review your lab notes.”  
  
“Right, the labs,” he mutters, shoving his drink in the crook of his elbow and flipping through his book frantically as he turns away, staring at his book with an intent gaze.  
  
“Stiles!” Angela yells after the kid as he spins away on his toes the moment his drink is securely lodged against his chest, dodging three people in his way as he hurries towards the doorway, head still buried in his notebook.  “You didn’t pay! Sti... oh whatever,” she huffs.  
  
Derek is left standing there in mild surprise because that was the not-coordinated but oddly graceful band-shirt guy, and he’d been standing close enough to see that the kid looked like he had spent the night in the library, and smelled vaguely of it too, all powdered cheese and body spray masking stale deodorant, which Derek couldn’t fault him for considering it was exam period and the poor kid had Ferguson’s exam today.  Derek himself had subsided off pizza and stale pizza for the week before one of Ferguson’s legendary exams, and he could actually remember how he came home from it and found crumbs lodged in his hair.  
  
He may have decided then and there what the topic of his research concentration for his senior Honours thesis was, a decision which then shaped his area of study leading right up to his current PhD scholar-research for his dissertation.    
  
“What’ll you have Professor Hale?” Angela asks.  
  
“Large coffee, black.  A lemon square.  And I’ll pay for Stiles’ hot chocolate.”  The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and he wonders if he needs to take the basic Psychology course he is teaching, because what he is doing could possibly be considered fixation, and he just, quite literally, made a Freudian slip.  
  
He should also know better than to apply psychological theories to himself, parapraxis when faced with learning the identity of the guy who his eyes tended to seek out or not.  
  
A guy who quotes Frank Herbert as easily as breathing.  
  
“That’s not necessary, sir.” she responds.  “It happens sometimes.  It doesn’t come out of our wages or anything.”  
  
Derek simply stares at her until she adds the drink to his tally.  
  
Then he considers reminding her about the lecture he gave six classes ago on intimidation tactics, but drops it because there is a huge difference between knowledge and behavioural instincts.  
  
He learns two very important things about band-shirt just by venturing out of his office at the completely coincidental time.  One, his name is Stiles, and two, he’s smart enough to be taking Ferguson’s ‘non-required for graduation, but a pre-requirement to a lot of specialty degrees within the Psych umbrella’ class from Hell.  
  
The next time he manages to stand in line at the same time as Stiles, again, completely coincidentally, as in he coincidentally saw Stiles walk into the library, his band-shirt a garish yellow, and Derek coincidentally pressed ‘save’ on the document he was working on, casually walked downstairs, and got in line.  He’s three people behind Stiles, but even from that far away he can tell Stiles is in much better spirits, perpetually in motion and grinning as he strikes up a conversation with the girl next to him about the peaceful protest going on out front.  
  
Then Derek realizes what he is doing and hopes to Piaget that this is some kind of fixation previously unrealized in his cognitive development - maybe to band-shirts - because otherwise he has no good explanation as to why he is doing this.  He closes his eyes for a moment in dread, but has to open them again to watch Stiles throw back his head to laugh.  
  
And yeah, Derek gets why he’s doing this.  It’s like a hit to the solar plexus, but he gets it.  
  
It’s been awhile since he’s considered attraction to be any kind of motivator in his life.  Honestly, he would much rather self-analyse it as anything, anything else.  
  
x.x.x.x.x.  
  
Summer term is spent gathering data and observations for his PhD dissertation at his family’s old summer lake house.  The camp is the perfect setting for studying the behavioural responses to fear as a stimuli, and people are willing to sign all sorts of documents to participate in Murder Camp, including the mandatory consent forms he needs to run his research. There is also something relaxing about getting out of academia and back to the lake, a place he clearly remembers as being among some of his best memories before the fire, and Derek needs the break that comes with swinging an axe around threateningly.  
  
Laura loves it because it gives her a job for three months of the year, which leaves her in better financial condition than the one acting gig she managed to land in a commercial three years ago did.    
  
His sister’s best talents lie in playing Laura Hale.  
  
Derek does not think about Stiles the whole time he’s at Camp Hale.  He’s busy, he’s outside of the four walls of Cal, and he just doesn’t.  
  
So it comes as a slight surprise to him when he’s back behind his desk, feeling slightly stifled by the size of his office compared to an entire campground and the constrictive material of his professional apparel, and he habitually looks for Stiles at his regular time.  
  
But Stiles doesn’t enter the library then, nor does he at any other time as far as Derek can tell.  He doesn’t even realize that he’s looking until he’s a few minutes early to teaching one of his first year classes and decides to stop for a coffee on his way out.  It isn’t something habitual or natural for him to do, but if possible this group of recent high school graduates is stupider than the year before, and caffeine is starting to look like a possible solution.  
  
Much better than getting his axe, anyway.  
  
He’s in the front of the line, a step away from ordering, when he hears Stiles laugh.    
  
Derek’s eyes automatically search him out, and he isn’t sure what to do with the relief he feels at seeing Stiles for the first time this school year or the knowledge that he has been actively searching for him, an unrealized action he doesn’t understand until finding him.  Stiles has his mouth open, and his face is turned back towards the doorway as he answers someone trying to hand him a pamphlet with charm and humour.  
  
Derek is aware that Stiles is stepping behind him in line and his parapraxis catches up to him again as he places his order.  Angela looks surprised.  
  
“So you do know him?” she asks.  
  
“No,” Derek grunts and grabs his coffee before he’s late to class.    
  
He hopes Stiles enjoys the hot chocolate, because not only does Derek have a class to teach but he needs to be as far away from Angela giving Stiles the ‘free’ drink as possible.    
  
How is that for a Fear Response? his mind mocks him.  
  
x.x.x.x.x.  
  
Buying Stiles a hot chocolate at the same time he buys himself a coffee becomes a habit, which concerns Derek because he isn’t even a habitual coffee drinker, but it certainly helps with those little asshole first years who think watching Criminal Minds means they know everything there is to know about psychology.    
  
“He doesn’t even know who Professor Hale is,” Angela tells him, handing him his change.  “I encouraged him to go see you, but I think he...”  
  
“I told you to leave my name out of it,” Derek growls in response.  
  
“Yeah, well,” Angela flips her hair.  “He’s starting to think I’m giving him free drinks on purpose.”  
  
“You are,” Derek says pointedly.  “Find out if he’s single.”  
  
“He’s starting to think I’m flirting with him!” Angela loudly calls as he walks away.    
  
x.x.x.x.x.  
  
“I respect you so much less,” she says the next day as she fills his order.  
  
“I know,” Derek agrees.  “I’m not going to be here tomorrow,” he tells her, handing over enough change to cover two days worth of hot chocolate.  What kind of person only ever ordered hot chocolate at a coffee stand?  If he hadn’t tasted the coffee for himself, a definite step up from the sludge in the Psych break room, but by no means gourmet, he might be a little confused.    
  
“Seriously?” she asks him, taking the money.  “If he doesn’t come in, I’m keeping it as tip money.”  
  
“You could potentially keep all of it as tip money,” Derek points out rationally and unconcerned.  
  
“Why don’t you just talk to him!” she asks in dismay.  “You’re not weirdly older than he is and he’s technically not even in the same department.  Just talk to him!”  She grins slyly and eyes him up and down.  “I think he’ll like you.”  
  
Derek regrets a lot of things.  The fact that Angela no longer fears him is at the top of his list.  
  
But, he decides he’ll take her advice and find a way to talk to Stiles and hope that she never lets it slip that Derek is the one who keeps buying Stiles hot chocolate based solely on the fact that Stiles is both graceful and clumsy, laughs with his face tilted upwards (towards Derek’s office, in some cases) and doesn’t bother keeping his facial expressions in check while hanging around a department keenly interested in emotional and behavioural responses.  He’s lovely and opened and genuine, and if Derek hadn’t once witnessed Stiles deliberately draw a demonstrator’s attention away from a crying girl with the opening line of ‘how do you feel about gay rights?’ and a heavy hand steering the demonstrator away, Derek might think that was all Stiles is.  
  
He’ll do it on Monday after he gets back from a weekend at Camp Hale.  Technically they don’t accept reservations after the last week in August, but a mid-September storm wrecked the roof on one of the cabins and Laura reopened the camp for Halloween on a skeleton staff to pay for repairs.  He couldn’t use any of the data for his research because there were too many variables, but he also wouldn’t leave his sister up in the mountains alone with strangers and in order for Camp Hale to work it needs the Groundskeeper character.  
  
x.x.x.x.x  
  
There’s a tree along the drive into camp that Derek has long since knotched a hole out of. For the sake of his research, there are specific duties as Groundskeeper that he is required to have down to an art. The entrance to camp and initial introduction to the Groundskeeper character is one of those things.  
  
It’s also the most boring, mainly because campers are only ever able to give a rough approximation of when they will arrive, and for fear of them showing up early, Derek gets to his marker at least an hour in advance. From that point on it’s a bunch of hurry up and wait. With an axe in his hand. Really, it’s a good thing he works out or it would be short of torture. As it is, he starts getting a crick in his shoulder after forty-five minutes, a pain that only intensifies as time goes on.  
  
The pain helps him get into character. Meaning it makes him want to kill something. Primarily his dissertation, but after another forty-five minutes of waiting and an hour and a half of axe holding, he’s in prime mental state to look like a potential serial killer waiting to kill the next car load of people who drive his way. Mainly because that is exactly how he’s feeling. So it’s a good thing the growling rumble of a vehicle echoes up the drive when it does, because Derek’s only ever had to wait on mark like this for two hours once, and it led to a weekend full of arm pain and Motrin.  
  
Minutes later a blue jeep is rumbling up the path. Crawling, actually, despite the fact that it’s a four-wheel road and it is clearly a four-wheel vehicle, and Derek judges whoever the driver is. Not even a little bit, just full on judges.  
  
The jeep inches under the “Welcome to Hale” sign, and while he can’t distinctly see the occupants of the car, he can see the figure of the driver lean over the steering wheel and shift, neck twisting as he inspects the sign until it’s physically impossible to do so. When he turns his attention back on the road, eyes scanning the rough terrain and dense foliage, an itch of familiarity digs at Derek.  
  
It’s not until right before they make eye contact that he realizes the driver is band-shirt, aka: Stiles, aka: the guy he has shamefully buying hot chocolates for, for months.  
  
Features frozen in a stoic glare, more out of years of practice combined with shock than anything else, Derek stares Stiles down as the jeep slowly rolls by, his stomach doing a series of nauseating flips before tumbling up into his ribcage and sinking heavily. Terrifying the bejesus out of his cru... Stiles--he winces at the thought, physically, because the jeep is past him now--was not the first impression he was hoping to make.  
  
Then again, Laura said this group was here to genuinely terrifying a single member of their party. The likelihood of that being someone who took, and passed, Ferguson’s class, might as well be nil. Besides, the thought of someone being an ass enough to want to terrify light-hearted, laughing, chipper Stiles just doesn’t compute.  
  
x.x.x.x.x.  
  
This is not how you’re supposed to dress an animal, any animal, not just a rabbit. It is, however, the way you are supposed to dress an animal if you're more concerned about how scary and intimidating you are and less about how much useable meat you're going to get, which is what he's trying to do, because somewhere around here someone, namely Stiles, was scheduled to walk in on this horrible mess he's making.  
  
Motion out of the corner of his eye tells him things are on track. A quick glance shows him that Stiles is frightened. Real fear. It makes him uncomfortable for some reason, and he knows he's not supposed to actually speak to Stiles, but he can't help himself.  
  
"I'll save you a paw," is meant to be a kind of olive branch to make up for the bloody mess of fur and animal innards, but it coincides with a thick chop of his hunting knife that sucks out any nonchalance the phrase could have.  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
Crap, he's messing this up. "Rabbit's foot," he clarifies. "For luck," because Stiles is going to need luck, what with what his friends and Laura have planned. Maybe he'll get the hint now, catch on to the fact that something's not right.  
  
"Ahhh," Stiles hums, clearly on edge. "Thanks?" His voice is pitched and strained.  
  
Derek scowls down at the bloody and maimed rabbits in front of him.  
  
One of Stiles' friends calls for him and he holds the guy off with a, "I'll be right there," followed by, "I have to. Well. Have fun with your... gutting and maiming." Going by his voice alone, it's a minor miracle he hasn't high tailed it and run.  
  
"Supper."  
  
"What?"  
  
"It's supper. I snared the rabbits and I'm cleaning them so we can all eat," Derek grinds out, irritated with himself for messing this up. He was just trying to break some of the tension, make the Groundskeeper a little more personable. Fantastic work there. If this was a viable results study, he would now have to add a chapter comparing the effects of the mute and verbalized Groundskeeper. Clearly there's a winner of which instills more fear.  
  
There's a tense pause followed by, "Good," and a near audible gulp. "Great. Food. Yippee. I love eating Thumper."  
  
By the time Derek looks up, Stiles is all but running away.  
  
The worst part is that he won't be silently lamenting his failures. No, the worst part is that Laura is right here witnessing them all. He can already hear her laughing.  
  
x.x.x.x.x.  
  
Derek is not being creepy when he stops by Stiles' cabin to check in on him at four a.m. He’s just making sure the grounds' victim hasn’t wandered away or been eaten by mountain lions, which he’s doing because Stiles doesn’t actually know what’s happening--or, at least, going to happen--and there was a report of a mountain lion sighting back in August. Really, it’s a safety thing. That’s all.  
  
He tries not to deviate from the schedule, but every moment with Stiles, every single interaction, throws the game off axis until the whole thing is tilting out of control.  It physically pains him to do most of the acts that have casually been a part of his fear studies since the beginning.  He had come to terms with the morality of his actions version the necessity of performing them for his thesis, and honestly it had never been much of a problem for him.  Now, though, now he struggled against deliberately frightening Stiles, the dead animal in the shower scene he was supposed to stage giving him a pause as Stiles sings, reminding Derek of why he was drawn to the goofy, enthusiastic guy in the first place.  
  
It should be and easy in and out, but it isn’t.  
  
The dead animal staged across a laid out towel is a standard. It’s one of the surgically precise parts of the camp experience that Derek has down to an artform because it plays a pretty necessary part in his dissertation.  
  
And he finds he can’t do it.  He can’t do the one thing that will cement Stiles’ fear of him, that will make the Groundskeeper the obvious villain in Stiles’ eyes, because for some reason Stiles actually sees him and maybe actually likes him.  
  
He considers that Stiles might need him to be the villain in order to facilitate solving who the killer is at Murder Camp and he’s torn between his desire not to prolong the torture and his need for Stiles not to hate him on sight.  
  
He takes too long thinking about it, because Stiles is aware of his presence and the shower curtain twitches as he calls out a greeting.  
  
And Derek gets distracted.  
  
It’s not his fault that Stiles hasn’t completely pulled the shower curtain closed and Derek gets a flash of his ass, and it’s not his fault that that is somehow distracting. It might be his fault that he doesn’t turn around and walk away, which means it’s definitely his fault that he’s still standing there, stack of towels in hand covering the dead animal that should be on display, when Stiles pulls back the curtain, eyes bugging and jaw dropping to take a breath and possibly scream.  
  
“Towel?” Derek asks.  
  
None of this is going right and yet he can’t stop events that are now in motion.  He can’t help but seek Stiles out, and is drawn to him, unable to differentiate between which of them is the moth and which is the flame.  
  
It’s all wrong, and all his fault, and as he sits in the back of a strange SUV with a bloody towel pressed against his head, Derek tries not to look too closely at the irony that everything he did in an attempt to help Stiles turned out to be the deviations from script that lead to Stiles having difficulties solving the murders.  
  
x.x.x.x.x.  
  
Derek arrives back home late Sunday night after a long drive along a road that is usually familiar to him, but he has a throbbing pain in his head from getting hit with a shovel, one that not even contentment can cure.  
  
Contentment in the form of Stiles’ phone number in his pocket and the memory of what Stiles feels like, pressed against him from mouth to thigh buzzing through his head on repeat.    
  
He has a game plan now.  
  
He never brings his cell phone with him.  He has an old burner phone that he keeps in his car for emergencies, but bringing a piece of modern technology into the mountains seems like the kind of fruitless endeavour that could lead to him accidentally dropping it off a cliff while attempting to check his email (and Laura vetoed it after a camper came across him taking a picture of a tree branch that looks like a gnome for [his instagram](http://howlsfromhale.tumblr.com/)).  He just wants to sleep the moment he stumbles into his apartment in Berkeley, but there is something he needs to do first.  
  
Something he promised.  
  
I said I would text once I was in civilization, he types out, adding Stiles to his contact list.  
  
Stiles texts back almost immediately: dude i’m delighted!!!!!!!!!!!! look at my overuse of !!  
  
Sleep now. Head wound. he answers back, but he’s smiling despite the fact Stiles’ egregious over-usage of exclamation points should add to the throbbing in his head.  
  
x.x.x.x.x.  
  
Monday, Derek calls his TA and asks him to take over the class for the day, citing his head wound as the reason.  Instead, he stands in line for coffee and a mint hot chocolate.  
  
Angela hands him his coffee and he raises his eyebrow at her.  “I ordered two drinks,” he reminds her.  
  
She gapes at him, hands automatically fixing Stiles’ drink, which he smugly notes is made from powdered hot chocolate and a dash of mint extract instead of the fresh mint leaves he made Stiles’ hot chocolate with.  “You’re gonna talk to him?” she asks in disbelief.  
  
Derek smirks.  
  
“What’s the game plan?”  
  
“I’m going to wait for him,” Derek answers, and then deliberately does not tell her anything else.  
  
“You’re gonna...?  That is a terrible idea,” she warns him, as though she actually believes his plan is to waylay Stiles with a drink and strike up conversation with him based on that.  
  
Which is actually his game plan.  
  
Time for morning coffee break, he texts Stiles, putting his coffee down on a ledge beside him.  
  
Me too! Well, hot chocolate. It won’t be nearly as good as yours ofc, Stiles texts back.  The corners of Derek’s mouth turn up in anticipation and he tucks away his phone, grabbing both the drinks as he turns to wait.  
  
Several moments later Stiles bursts through the door, the wind catching his clothes behind him and propelling him through with a gust of leaves and flyers from the weekend kegger.  Stiles stumbles and then rights himself, and Derek is already smiling because it is such a familiar view, so similar to the first time he saw Stiles, that it makes sense that it happens again today.    
  
He is halfway towards the coffee stand when he sees Derek and is suddenly no longer in motion, grinding to a halt as he looks over and blinks, a smile curving along his lips until he’s grinning in delight.  
  
“Derek!” Stiles exclaims, throwing himself forward and crossing the few feet between them, all enthusiastic smiles and limbs as he knocks bodily into Derek, spilling half the cup of coffee over Derek’s arm.  Derek doesn’t care because he has Stiles in his arms, laughing and telling him that texting is a treat but this is so much better.    
  
Then Stiles is kissing him, and Derek grabs him, hot chocolate spilling over the back of Stiles’ hoodie and over Derek’s hand.  He doesn’t care if the cup becomes completely crumpled, because his arm is around Stiles’s shoulder, and Stiles’ long fingers are tangled in the front of his shirt, one brushing against the collar and scraping against his jaw.  Derek’s lips brush against Stiles’ as he parts his mouth slightly.  Stiles makes a slight sound of contentment and leans closer into Derek’s space.  
  
Someone whistles as they walk past them.  
  
Derek pulls back slightly because he has a reputation to uphold, and these are his students, and if they continue kissing for much longer Derek won’t care about any of that.  
  
“You’re here,” Stiles whispers, eyes smiling at him from a few inches away.  “How did you know I come here?”  
  
“This is yours,” Derek says, handing Stiles his cup of hot chocolate as though that is a sufficient answer.  
  
“Hot chocolate!” Stiles grins, sniffing at the cup.  There are rivulets of the sticky drink coating the outside of the cup and over Derek’s fingers.  “Well, half of one.”  
  
“You’re wearing the other half,” Derek tells him, gesturing to Stiles’ hoodie.  
  
Stiles laughs, turning to get a good look at the back of his sweater.  “Oh man!” he grins at Derek, looking happy and content and as though Derek has answered all of his concerns for their long-distance relationship woes.    
  
Which, Derek supposes, he has.  
  
“But how?  Don’t get me wrong, seeing you here is awesome, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this is the creepiest thing you’ve done to me yet, and I mean that in the best way possible because I’m glad to see you and I didn’t think we’d be able to make out again for months until you came down from your mountain man hibernation all crazy from lack of human contact and you’d just attack me with your gruff scruffy face like I was the only thing that got you through a long, hard winter.”  Stiles is taking him in as his talks, his bright, clever eyes darting away every few sentences to scan the room before landing back on Derek.  “So it was you with the hot chocolate?”  
  
It’s that quickness that should have made Stiles a natural at Murder Camp, and a very small part of him can see why someone might think Stiles would have fun solving a murder mystery.  
  
“Come on,” Derek urges, ignoring the way he can see Angela gaping over the side of the counter in the coffee shop, staring at both of them in shock.  “We can go up to my office and talk.”  
  
Stiles pauses for a second, and Derek actually wonders if this was a mistake, if he’s finally gone too far in creeping Stiles out, but Stiles just grins at him.  “Awesome, that solves so many problems.  I do have one question.  It’s very important.”  
  
“Ok,” Derek says, uncertainly, because there are so many things Stiles could ask.  
  
“How long and hard would your winter be without me?” Stiles smirks at him.

**Author's Note:**

> As bonus material for the Welcome to Hale series, relenafanel and rlnerdgirl have created tumblr accounts for [ Derek](http://howlsfromhale.tumblr.com/) and [Stiles](http://stilesbot.tumblr.com/). Join us and watch Derek and Stiles interact as we count down the days to the Welcome to Hale sequel.


End file.
